Okubo-Zweig-Iizuka-rule violation and B\to \eta^{(\prime)}K branching ratios

TL;DR

This paper investigates how small violations of the OZI rule in the eta-eta' mixing can significantly affect B meson decay rates, offering a potential explanation for observed discrepancies in branching ratios.

Contribution

It demonstrates that OZI-rule violating effects can enhance the eta_q meson scale, explaining the differences in B to eta' K and B to eta K decay data.

Findings

OZI-rule violations can increase the eta_q scale by several times

Enhanced eta_q scale explains the B decay branching ratio differences

Proposes experimental tests to distinguish between different theoretical explanations

Abstract

We show that few-percent Okubo-Zweig-Iizuka-rule violating effects in the quark-flavor basis for the $\eta$-$\eta'$ mixing can enhance the chiral scale associated with the $\eta_q$ meson few times. This enhancement is sufficient for accommodating the dramatically different data of the $B\to\eta^{\prime} K$ and $B\to\eta K$ branching ratios. We comment on other proposals for resolving this problem, including flavor-singlet contributions, axial U(1) anomaly, and nonperturbative charming penguins. Discrimination of the above proposals by means of the $B\to\eta^{(\prime)}\ell\nu$ and $B_s\to\eta^{(\prime)}\ell\ell$ data is suggested.